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Oath of Office

From the New York Times best-selling author of A Heartbeat Away and The Last Surgeon comes a shocking new novel at the crossroads of politics and medicine. What if a well respected doctor inexplicably goes on a murderous rampage? When Dr. John Meacham goes on a shooting spree, his business partner, staff, and two patients are killed in the bloodbath. Then Meacham turns the gun on himself.

A Heartbeat Away

On the night of the State of the Union address, President James Allaire expects to give the speech of his career. But no one anticipates the terrifying turn of events that forces him to quarantine everyone in the Capitol building. A terrorist group calling itself “Genesis” has unleashed WRX3883, a deadly, highly contagious virus, into the building. No one fully knows the deadly effect of the germ except for the team responsible for its development—a team headed by Allaire, himself.

Trauma: A Novel

Dr. Carrie Bryant's four years as a neurosurgical resident at White Memorial Hospital have earned her the respect and admiration from peers and staff alike. When given the chance of performing her first unsupervised brain surgery, Carrie jumps at the opportunity. What should have been a routine, hours-long operation turns horribly wrong and jeopardizes her patient's life. Emotionally and physically drained, Carrie is rushed back to the OR to assist in a second surgery.

Mercy: A Novel

Dr. Julie Devereux is an outspoken advocate for the right to die - until a motorcycle accident leaves her fiancé, Sam Talbot, a quadriplegic. Sam begs to end his life, but Julie sees hope in a life together. With the help of an organization that opposes physician-assisted suicide, Julie has Sam coming around to her point of view when he suddenly dies from an unexpected heart attack.

Silent Treatment

In Silent Treatment, best-selling author Dr. Michael Palmer crosses the line between medicine and murder with a heart-pounding thriller guaranteed to satisfy fans of medical suspense.

When his wife mysteriously dies the night before she is scheduled for surgery, Dr. Harry Corbett realizes a killer is moving through the wards of Good Samaritan Hospital - a killer so sophisticated and silent that he can only be a doctor.

The Patient

His name is ARTIE, a miracle of bio-engineering that is about to transform the field of neurosurgery. Dr. Jessie Copeland knows him better than anyone else at Eastern Mass Medical Center- and knows it's too soon to be using the tiny robot on a living patient's brain. But, Jessie's department chief is too busy to worry about such ethics. And neither of them has any idea that ARTIE will attract a patient from their worst nightmares.

Fatal

The master of medical suspense brings us another novel of controversy, biology, and human greed. Internist Matt Rutledge has spent the last five years trying to find links between the deaths of his wife and his father. He suspects the Belinda Coke and Coal Company has released toxic chemicals into the environment that have caused the "Belinda Syndrome," a miasma of symptoms that include violent and deadly paranoia in some, Ebola-like hemorrhaging in others. But he lacks proof.

The Last Surgeon

Michael Palmer’s latest novel pits a flawed doctor against a ruthless psychopath, who has made murder his art form. Dr. Nick Garrity, a vet suffering from PTSD—post traumatic stress disorder—spends his days and nights dispensing medical treatment from a mobile clinic to the homeless and disenfranchised in D.C. and Baltimore. In addition, he is constantly on the lookout for his war buddy, Umberto Vasquez, who was plucked from the streets by the military four years ago for a secret mission and has not been seen since.

The Sisterhood

Inside Boston Doctors Hospital, patients are dying. In the glare of the operating room, they survive the surgeon's knife. But in the dark, hollow silence of the night, they die. Suddenly, inexplicably, horribly. A tough, bright doctor will risk his very life for a dedicated young nurse who unknowingly holds the answers.

Miracle Cure

Dr. Brian Holbrook - former football star and disgraced chief of cardiology - is given the chance of a lifetime when he gets a call from the prestigious Boston Heart Institute. They need him to join an elite team testing the new miracle drug Vasclear. With his father suffering from a dangerous heart condition, Holbrook seizes the opportunity to save his reputation, and also his father's life. However, when patients start dying mysteriously, and colleagues begin to disappear, it's up to Holbrook to find the truth before it's too late.

The First Patient: A Novel

Gabe Singleton and Andrew Stoddard were roommates at the Naval Academy in Annapolis years ago. Today, Gabe is a country doctor and his friend Andrew has gone from war hero to governor to President of the United States. One day, Marine One lands on Gabe's Wyoming ranch, and President Stoddard delivers a disturbing revelation and a startling request.

The Second Opinion

Here, Michael Palmer has created a cat-and-mouse game where one woman must confront a conspiracy of doctors to uncover an evil practice that touches every single person who ever has a medical test. With unforgettable characters and twists and betrayals that come from the most unlikely places, The Second Opinion will keep you guessing...and looking over your shoulder.

Host

Lynn Peirce, a fourth-year medical student at South Carolina's Mason-Dixon University, thinks she has her life figured out. But when her otherwise healthy boyfriend, Carl, enters the hospital for routine surgery, her neatly ordered life is thrown into total chaos. Carl fails to return to consciousness after the procedure, and an MRI confirms brain death. Devastated by Carl's condition, Lynn searches for answers.

The Fifth Vial

From Boston, a disgraced medical student travels to South America to deliver a research paper that could save her career and becomes a victim of an unspeakable crime...Thousands of miles away, a brilliant, reclusive scientist, dying from an incurable disease that threatens to make each tortured breath his last, is on the verge of perfecting a serum that could save millions of lives.

Side Effects

Kate Bennett - a bright hospital pathologist with a loving husband and a solid future. Until one day her world turns dark. A strange, puzzling illness has killed two women. Now it endangers Kate's closest friend. Soon it will threaten Kate's marriage. Her sanity. Her life. Kate has uncovered a horrifying secret. Important people will stop at nothing to protect it. It is a terrifying medical discovery. And its roots lie in one of the greatest evils in the history of humankind.

Delayed Diagnosis: Rhea Lynch, M.D., Book 1

Dr. Rhea Lynch left a suffocating life in Charleston to practice medicine in the ER of a small South Carolina Hospital. Now, Dawkins County is her home, a place that holds the only real family she's ever known. But when she returns from vacation, Rhea is shocked to discover that her best friend, Marisa, is near death and unable to communicate. The official diagnosis: a paralyzing stroke. Despite the family's attempts to keep her away, Rhea is determined to make her own diagnosis.

A Case of Need: A Novel

When one doctor is accused of murder, it takes another to set him free. In the tightly knit world of Boston medicine, the Randall family reigns supreme. When heart surgeon J. D. Randall's teenage daughter dies during a botched abortion, the medical community threatens to explode. Was it malpractice? A violation of the Hippocratic Oath? Or was Karen Randall murdered in cold blood?

No Man's Land: John Puller Series

John Puller's mother disappeared nearly 30 years ago. Despite an intensive search and investigation, she was never seen again. But new allegations have come to light suggesting that Puller's father - now suffering from dementia and living in a VA hospital - may have murdered his wife. Puller is officially barred from working on the case and faces a potential court-martial if he disobeys the order, but he knows he can't sit this investigation out.

The Wrong Side of Goodbye: A Harry Bosch Novel, Book 21

Harry Bosch is California's newest private investigator. He doesn't advertise, he doesn't have an office, and he's picky about who he works for, but it doesn't matter. His chops from 30 years with the LAPD speak for themselves. Soon one of Southern California's biggest moguls comes calling. The reclusive billionaire has less than six months to live and a lifetime of regrets. He hires Bosch to find out whether he has an heir.

The Whistler

Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption. But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business with a new identity. He now goes by the name Greg Myers, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined.

Forgive Me

PI Angie DeRose strives to find and rescue endangered runaways - work that stands in stark contrast to her own safe, idyllic childhood. But in the wake of her mother's sudden death, Angie makes a life-altering discovery. Hidden among the mementos in her parents' attic is a photograph of a little girl, with a code and a handwritten message on the back: "May God forgive me." Angie has no idea what it means, and her father claims to know nothing. The lies she unearths will bring her past and present together with terrifying force.

Chaos: A Scarpetta Novel

In the quiet of twilight, on an early autumn day, 26-year-old Elisa Vandersteel is killed while riding her bicycle along the Charles River. It appears she was struck by lightning - except the weather is perfectly clear, with not a cloud in sight. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the Cambridge Forensic Center's director and chief, decides at the scene that this is no accidental act of God. Her investigation becomes complicated when she begins receiving a flurry of bizarre poems from an anonymous cyberbully who calls himself Tailend Charlie.

First Do No Harm: Benjamin Davis Book Series

Attorney Benjamin Davis is a young New York transplant seeking to make a name for himself in the Nashville legal community. After miscalculating the huge risks involved in accepting ten medical malpractice cases at one time, Davis discovers that a hospital and several of its personnel, including doctors, had conspired to provide unnecessary tests and surgeries on innocent patients... for years. With small town physicians pushing all the ethical and legal boundaries, Davis decides he has no alternative but to protect an entire community...

Cross the Line: Alex Cross, Book 24

Shots ring out in the early morning hours in the suburbs of Washington, DC. When the smoke clears, a prominent police official lies dead, leaving the city's police force scrambling for answers. Under pressure from the mayor, Alex Cross steps into the leadership vacuum to crack the case. But before Cross can make any headway, a brutal crime wave sweeps across the region. The deadly scenes share only one common thread: The victims are all criminals.

Publisher's Summary

From The New York Times bestselling author of Oath of Office comes a gripping thriller at the crossroads of politics and medicineDr.

Lou Welcome, from Palmer's bestselling Oath of Office, is back in this heart stopping medical thriller. A desperate phone call embroils Lou in scandal and murder involving Dr. Gary McHugh, known around the Capital as the "society doc." Lou has been supervising McHugh, formerly a black-out drinker, through his work with the Physician Wellness Office.

McHugh has been very cavalier about his recovery, barely attending AA and refusing a sponsor. But Lou sees progress, and the two men are becoming friends. Now, McHugh has been found unconscious in his wrecked car after visiting a patient of his, the powerful Congressman Elias Colston, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Soon after McHugh awakens in the hospital ER, Colston's wife returns home to find her husband shot dead in their garage. She then admits to the police that she had just broken off a long-standing affair with McHugh.

Something about McHugh's story has Lou believing he is telling the truth, that the Congressman was dead when he arrived and before he blacked out. Lou agrees to look into matters, but when he encounters motive, method and opportunity he is hard pressed to believe in his friend - that is until a deadly high-level conspiracy begins to unravel, and Lou acquires information that makes him the next target.

Medical mysteries are not usually my preference, however Dr. Welcome does not seem to fit into a medical mystery. He is more of a detective. I find him to be a very likable character along with Cap his AA sponsor. I enjoyed this book and I will try the next one.

I reserve 4-Stars and 5-Stars for the "I can't put them down page turners" This is not in that category, but I did find it an interesting premise.

With "Political Suicide," Palmer returns to his likable protagonist, Lou Welcome, from his prior novel, "Oath of Office." Only, you don't necessarily have to listen to "Oath of Office" first, as "Political Suicide" tells a new story. Palmer does, sometimes, fetch afar for his plots; and I am hoping that he has done so, again, with this one. I don't want to believe that a plot like this one could actually be hatched in the upper echelons of power. Without giving away any surprises -- in deference to those who don't like "spoilers" -- this story deals with a despicable way of leveling the playing field in the war on terror. Medicine -- Palmer's usual theme -- plays only a subsidiary part here, demonstrating Palmer's gradual move toward the political-thriller genre. Some of the characterizations in "Political Suicide" do stretch credibility a bit -- like lawyer Sarah Cooper's sudden transformation from nasty to nice -- but the cute plot twist at the end of the story ameliorated that weakness to a certain extent for me. As with "Oath of Office," narrator Robert Petkoff does a good job reading us "Political Suicide," clearly distinguishing all the characters from one another with different voices and accents. If you like thrillers, and don't mind suspending disbelief just a bit, I recommend "Political Suicide" to you.

The hero, Dr. Louis Welcome, is incredible. He puts himself in remarkably dangerous situations to help a mere acquaintance. Really? He sheds light on baffling mysteries by engaging in research that any competent law firm would engage in -- so why, exactly, aren't the lawyers doing it? He is able to outmaneuver an elite military unit (the green berets on steroids) -- well, how elite can this unit be, if a middle aged ER doc can break into their facilities? All in all, in-credible.

It is hard to get excited about a mystery protagonist with as many weaknesses as Lou Welcome. I know, it is bad writing to have a perfect protagonist but making Welcome a recovering alcoholic, drug addict doctor would seem to cover that. But, making him impulsive, undisciplined and stupid is over the top. Maybe there are doctors out there with those traits, but I hope I don't run into one.

I guess we were suppose to believe that he only blunders around out of control and does stupid stuff like leaving the only evidence that will help his friend under his socks (did I mention he lives in a "dodgy" neighborhood?), but somehow is a different person as a doctor? Speaking of which, he appears to be the least successful doctor of all time (surprise, surprise). His addictions tanked his marriage, but after 10 years, he is still struggling to make ends meet due to paying child support? Fortunately, he has won his daughter over after all that time...although it is hard to see why. He works double shifts while allowing his ex-wife to cart their daughter around to all of her events and goes into a panic when the daughter contemplates coming to live with him instead of her mother.

Instead he gets a cat...and names it "Diversity". This is just one of the lame excuses Michael Palmer uses to push his political philosophy. Apparently, living in a diverse neighborhood, having a pet named "Diversity" and eating vegetarian pizzas balances the major fissures in Welcome's character and intelligence. And speaking of pushing political philosophies, the police and military characters are such caricatures that they are only missing handlebar mustaches while tying Nell to the railroad track.

So if you are anti-military and police, love sustainable pizza and are willing to overlook overwhelming character flaws in the "hero" and major logic flaws in the plot, you should love this.

Would you ever listen to anything by Michael Palmer again?

I have read other books by Michael Palmer and while I thought they were a little slow, I liked his writing style enough that I bought another one. Audible lets you return bad books, so I might try one again to see if this is a fluke...or the other was.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Clearly I was disappointed that Palmer decided to promote his political position while phoning in plot and characters.

I love political novels and I love medical novels and this combines the two.

Have you listened to any of Robert Petkoff’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No

Any additional comments?

Michael Palmer is one of my favorite authors and this book is better than most other authors' books, but it definitely falls below Palmer's usual standards. A little slow and unimaginative in spots, I would still take it over most other authors. If you have never read Michael Palmer, you will love it. If you are a Michael Palmer fan, you might be a little disappointed.

Easy to listen to we'll read I listen in the car to and from work no troublefollowing story

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

faye

Watford, United Kingdom

2/21/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Not bad but somewhat unbelievable"

starts off well but slips into silliness. You can imagine that the experiments propping up the story do go on, however, the surrounding events are unbelievable and, personally, I think spoil the book. However, if you are one for "action" this may be something you will like.the narrator is fine, nothing jars and the female portrayals are as good as the male. I found it easy to distinguish between the character's voices, which is not always the case. I will probably get another of Mr Palmer's books, but have to say, this is not one I will listen to again.

0 of 1 people found this review helpful

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